SESSION: MIDNIGHT, MARCH 13, 2017
Naked, I smear myself with coconut oil. Go into the witchcraft room. Pull on Kathy Acker’s green velvet minidress. Her literary executor gave me this dress at CalArts. I zip up the back. Take out a black volume called, Séance. The Oulipo anthology sits unopened on the hardwood floor.
Immediately, the voices start in. My Schizoaffective Disorder does that. Makes the supernatural a real party. I socialize best with ghosts, not people.
Oh you want to talk to Kathy Acker, do you? Well, take a fucking number, seriously. Talk to Jean Genet, he’s been hovering right here waiting to talk to you since you found “Grimoire Magazine” and started thinking about him. Kathy is oh so busy with people who actually knew her in her time, they didn’t just whack off to the sex scenes in her books!
I light incense. Say back to the voice, “Her sex scenes inspired my own so much, but yes, Jean Genet is the spirit I seek. I always think of how he wrote Our Lady of the Flowers in his own shit on toilet paper in prison. Inspires me everyone I take a shit and get it all over my hands to write more and more whatever the odds.”
Well, I hope you wash your hands first.
“Of course,” I reply. I light pink and red candles for sacred dick. “Mr. Genet?” I say. “Speak to me, please? I come a willing supplicant seeking your wise advice and counsel. I’m such a fan!”
Oh, aren’t you just the cutest little baby witch getting all spooky! Do you think I haven’t noticed your repeated pleas for my attention every dawn mediation? Being Kathy’s sloppy seconds doesn’t appeal to me but your desperation catches my attention.
“You, Mr. Genet. You and Ms. Acker both are influences in the abject writing I do.”
Well, Kathy’s busy right now, and I am not Kathy’s receptionist! But, you know, these blowjob paintings you have hanging around this room are quite charming… Remind me of something an erotic collector would have had in my time.
“Thank you. I paint them. No one will print them but magazines always seem interested in my stuff after I send them these.”
Oh honey, keep smearing shit into gold. You’ll find your way someday. Perhaps like me not until long after you are dead. It’s fine to be discovered later after a disreputable life.
“Is it really, Mr. Genet? I’m so starstruck!”
Oh little witch, this future you live in has wonders untold I never could have dreamed of. This Internet you write for? This pornography available for free on an invisible cloud all around us? it’s enough to pass on some of the old syph just floating around in it! Kathy forgives you for wearing her dress and calling someone else up instead, by the way.
“You are ultimate old school, Mr. Genet. I’ll let you go now not to waste any more of your precious time, but thank you so much for speaking with me.”
You’re welcome. When a witch with no panties on puts on a dead woman’s dress, you will be hearing from the afterlife.”
“So sorry to bother you. Blessed be and thank you so much.”
Goodbye. And remember, don’t treat the supernatural like a toy or it will not be so kind to you.
Andrea Lambert wrote Jet Set Desolate (Future Fiction London: 2009), Lorazepam & the Valley of Skin: Extrapolations on Los Angeles (valeveil: 2009) and the chapbook G(u)ilt (Lost Angelene, 2011). Her writing appears in 3:AM Magazine, Fanzine, Entropy, Angel’s Flight Literary West, HTMLGiant, Queer Mental Health and elsewhere. Anthologies: Golden State 2017: The Best New Writing From California, Haunting Muses, Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices, The L.A. Telephone Book Vol. 1, 2011-2012, Off the Rocks Volume #16: An Anthology of GLBT Writing and elsewhere. CalArts MFA. Website: andreaklambert.com Twitter: @AndreaLamber.